Well, evidence suggests that someone(s) did. And that evidence is not just my really broken beekeeping intuition, but rather a more trustworthy source - the video feature on my suddenly (shockingly) functioning phone.

Because my phone is apparently a total perv for bee sex and began magically (shockingly) functioning fully like it's supposed to when I was sitting out in my bee spying chair staring all lazily at the hive, the day after the WHY IS THIS SO FUCKING HARD there's no queen in my hive incident, and saw Ms. Someone Bang Me herself just getting ready to take her virgin flight.

YES.

I saw the queen bee outside of the hive. Which is really quite rare since the only time a queen leaves the hive is to mate and all of my queens have arrived mated in the past so this is the #1 time I've seen a queen bee outside of a hive period so I'll thank you to just be impressed and let me show you the video evidence of said Queen Bee Outside of Hive.

Outside and waving her lady junk in the air like she just don't care, and such.

Then THEN! about 20 minutes later, I was still out in the garden, like messing with the apple tree or something, when I heard piping again.

Remember piping? The SOMEONE BANG ME, ALREADY song of queen bees everywhere? Yes, well, they sing a slightly different song when they're back in the hive and successfully banged.

And then, a little bit later while I was still out there fucking with the garden because I don't know when to leave well enough alone to bang in my yard, I saw some solid evidence that the queen REALLY HAD returned freshly banged and REALLY HAD been advising the staff of the future arrival of up to a million baby bees because the ritualistic killing of the drones had begun.

Like, the queen had gotten her fill of the drones and now they were of no use to her. So, like, off with their heads and shit.

Yay, right?

My hive righted itself, the queen got laid, returned to the hive safely, set her legions of worker gals to KILL and I *may* have a semi-functioning beehive again.

AND I GOT IT ALL ON VIDEO BY SOME FUCKING MIRACLE YAY.

Yes, yay.

And now you may be interested to know that, due to the success of my hive during times of me NOT fucking with it, I have adopted a new beekeeping method.

It's the NOT FUCKING WITH IT method.

Mostly it's just me NOT FUCKING WITH IT unless there's something very visibly wrong with it. From the outside. Where I can't do so much damage.

Like, unless all of the bees are lying dead outside the hive on the ground in a heart crushing display of sadness or not a single bee is flying out of the thing all day even though conditions are perfectly acceptable for flying or I, like, see flames shooting out of the hive - I'm not checking in.

The only time I'm touching the hive is to add water to the entrance feeder (which I can do without fucking anything up), add a super if they've filled the one they have or waaaaaaaaaaay later on if I've been really good, harvest the honey.

That's it.

Otherwise, they're on their own and I think we can all agree that it's better that way. Frankly, I think it may be the only way that I can "keep" bees. Because what I've been doing to date can hardly be described as beekeeping. More like beeFUCKINGUPNOMATTERWHATIDO.

Ugh.

And since no beekeepers can agree on what the right amount of hive checks are, I won't be listening to any that come out of the woodwork and go, "you know, you really should be checking them once a month/week/day/year/second." because shuttup.

Unless you're Awesome Steve. In which case I will totally listen. But Steve is cool with my NOT FUCKING WITH IT METHOD. Because he's awesome and also of a similar mind.

Ooh, on a nice random note to round out the random in this post - I start my first full time farming gig on Monday and HOLY SHIT THAT'S A SCARY AWESOME FUCKED UP THING to be saying.

Nope - no beekeeping regalia at all for these videos. Just flip flops, a tank top and a skirt if I'm remembering correctly. But I do check the hive in flip flops. When I check it. Which is rare now. I've learned my lesson.

I went to a beekeeping workshop a few weeks ago (the day after I RETIRED, in fact), and while the instructor was pretty knowledgeable, he did not know about piping and I'm guessing he does not know all that you just described (and caught on video!) You inspire me.

[2013 update: You can't comment as an anonymous person anymore. Too many douchebags were leaving bullshit SPAM comments and my inbox was getting flooded, but if you're here to comment in a real way like a real person, go to it.]

Look at you commenting, that's fun.

So, here's the thing with commenting, unless you have an email address associated with your own profile, your comment will still post, but I won't have an email address with which to reply to you personally.

Sucks, right?

Anyway, to remedy this, I usually come back to my posts and post replies in the comment field with you.

But, if you ever want to email me directly to talk about pumpkins or shoes or what it's like to spend a good part of your day Swiffering - shoot me an email to finnyknitsATgmailDOTcom.